Sunday, July 1, 2018

Took my wife up to the old ski bowl and panther Meadows today

The old ski bowl (not the new one) was destroyed by an avalanche likely in the late 1960s or early 1970s and some of my friends then were paid to tear down what was left and to salvage the useful pieces then in the 1970s. It had to be the early 1970s because in Winter 1970 1971 I think my friends and I visited it after we almost froze to death in a white out between Bunny Flats and Horse Camp when we had to dig a snow cave because we couldn't see our hands in front of our faces and didn't know exactly where we were because people didn't have GPS devices then because they hadn't been invented yet. So, because of this my joints hurt for 3 or 4 years after that but I did survive which was good and I'm still alive now at age 70.

By going up to 8000 feet or so I could drop the outside temperature from 89 or so down to 77 today. I was up there yesterday with friends before my wife arrived in her car in Mt. Shasta and it was about 73 to 75 there yesterday. Today was the hottest day this week until next weekend by the way here in Mt. Shasta. However, it was 109 degrees in Redding today and friends called me on business. However, it isn't the humid 109 like you would have back east but a little more desert like so you can actually survive 109 degrees more easily here than on the east coast or south in the humidity that gets like Hawaii where you feel you are underwater walking around in the air.

For most people walking around at 90% humidity in 109 degrees Fahrenheit most people might not survive that these days without air conditioning, ice or something to keep them cool like being sprayed with water or jumping in streams or hoses or lakes or pools or something to reduce their bodies temperatures. 90% humidity likely could be a heat index as high as 120 to 125 degrees with humidity that high. So, when the heat index is that high it easily can be fatal.

I have been over 24 hours in 120 to 125 degrees in Arizona without Air Conditioning in my early 20s on business in near Gila Bend when I was in a mining business. At the time it was summer and we were prospecting and just slept in the back of my Dad's pickup truck and we had hired a backhoe to sample an area to see if it would be cost effective to mine there.

So, the only way I could function when it got the hottest was to get on my Honda 250 XL (which was a dualsport motorcycle good off road or on the freeway and wet my t-shirt in a pool next to a windmill for the wild animals to drink in a dry river bed and drive down the dry wash to cool down with my wet t-shirt on to reduce my body temperature before I passed out at these temperatures. I was about 25 to 27 then so I could survive it but I had a headache for several days afterwards doing this because my brain got too hot. But, in the 1970s and before people tended to take life closer to the edge than most people do now in the U.S.

So, I noticed that the trees were not happy campers near Panther Meadows or above and my wife had a vision that many trees were going to die at that altitude on Mt. Shasta at the higher elevations because of more ultraviolet light combined with not enough rain for many years now. She didn't know when this was going to happen exactly but saw a vision of trees at the top of a butte not being there in the future. Not being alive.

The lower meadows already has no water in it but as of yesterday the upper Panther Meadow springs are running good but go underground at some point between Upper and Lower panther Meadows.

I didn't walk between the lower and upper meadows so I don't know at which point the springs go underground or dry up.

One way people cool down in Redding is to swim in the Sacramento river or Shasta Lake or Whiskeytown lake.

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